Fic: Self Preservation - Bad Girls - Karen/Lou (implied), Karen/Helen (implied)
Title: Self-Preservation
Fandom: Bad Girls
Pairing: Karen / Lou (implied), Karen / Helen (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An alternative history of Karen Betts and her reasons for coming to Larkhall...
Disclaimer: Everything Bad Girls belongs to Shed, not me
Author's Note: Cross-posted to passion_perfect
Self-Preservation
Karen had transfered to Larkhall to escape from the past, not to have it catch up with her all over again. But ever since she’d arrived, Jim Fenner had been all over her like a rash, going on and on about that night they’d shared, asking her question after question, when all she wanted to do was forget that it had ever happened. He’d been asking her about Steven, her ex-husband, that morning, and she’d politely but firmly told him where to go. Not because she particularly objected to Jim knowing that she and Steven had broken up, but because she knew that if she told him that much, Jim would automatically fill in the blanks, would assume that he had played the starring role. He’d convince himself, and probably everyone else too, that their misguided and alcohol-fuelled one-night stand had been instrumental in the break-up of her twenty year marriage. And she supposed it had, on some bizarre and indirect level. But certainly not in the way Jim might imagine. In retrospect, it was blindingly obvious to Karen that her brief fling with Jim had confirmed what she’d always known, deep down. That the problem with her marriage had nothing to do with Steven, per se, but had everything to do with men in general. So, loathe as she was to fuel Jim’s egoistic views of the power of his own sexual prowess, she found herself equally reluctant to disclose to Jim the real reason for her the breakdown of her marriage; a passionate year-long affair with a colleague at her previous establishment. Well, not just a colleague. The wing governor. Governor Stoke. Louise.
The niggling feeling that something was missing had been a permanent feature in Karen’s life for about as long as she could remember. She’d married young, and before she’d even had time to get used to being a wife, she’d fallen pregnant. Nine months later, her beautiful baby boy became the centre of her world and everything else took a permanent backseat. However, as Ross had grown older, Karen had gradually come to realise that being a wife and mother wasn’t enough, that she needed more. She’d started her career in the prison service soon after Ross had started school but it wasn’t long before even the combined pressures of her professional life and motherhood had ceased to satisfy her cravings. So Karen had returned to education and, intent on broadening her horizons, had worked part-time for a degree throughout Ross’s secondary school career, with many an evening spent studying together at the dining table, Steven complaining that he may as well be invisible for all anyone cared. She’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel with her fling with Jim; a desperate last-ditch attempt to find something meaningful, to fill the mysterious void which still lingered in her life, and unsurprisingly it hadn't worked. Despite what she'd said to him, she was glad Jim hadn't called, because she had no idea how she would have coped if he'd spontaneously decided that he wanted to be a part of her life. It was far easier all round to pretend that that night had never happened, which was exactly what Karen had been doing until the previous week, and would continue to do, if only the decision were hers alone.
Lou Stoke’s appointment as wing governor had roughly coincided with Ross leaving home, and suddenly, after eighteen years of fruitless soul searching, Karen had realised why she felt so incomplete, had finally discovered what it meant to put her own needs and desires first. She’d never consciously considered the fact that she might be more attracted to women than men, but she supposed that on some level, she must have always known, since she’d not been particularly surprised when an after-work drink with Lou had quickly turned into so much more. Karen knew it was a cliche, but Lou really had made her complete. The first time that Lou’s lips closed over hers, Karen finally realised that this was what she had been waiting for all along; that after years of searching, she’d found what she needed somewhere that she’d never have thought to look. Six months later, after the kiss that changed everything, she divorced her husband and moved in with Lou. Six months after that, Lou got cold feet and left her, claiming she wasn’t ready to settle down. In the two months that had passed since then, work had become a daily torture, the ever-present threat of coming face to face with Lou, of being forced to relive her heartbreak at any given moment, hanging over Karen like a big black cloud. So when, out of the blue, Simon Stubberfield called to offer her a job at HMP Larkhall, Karen didn’t think twice.
Karen knew exactly what Jim would make of the whole sorry story. He’d made his views on lesbianism (completely unacceptable unless it was for his personal gratification) pretty clear to her at that conference and as much as she wanted to grind the homophobic prick into the ground, she knew she wasn’t emotionally strong enough to take him on yet. The pain was still too raw and all Karen wanted was lay low, to hide herself and her vulnerability away from the world. Karen had known that Simon’s offer seemed too good to be true. Not only was he offering her the comfort of not coming face to face with Lou every day, but there was a promotion and a pay rise in it for her too. And she wouldn’t have to move. In fact if anything, her commute would probably be shorter. Discovering that Jim Fenner was the acting governor of G-wing had been the fly in the ointment. In Karen’s eyes, the man was a stereotypical male chauvinist pig and she couldn’t for the life of her think what had ever possessed her to climb into bed with him. Still, much as she disliked the idea of having the man as a boss, it was better than being forced to endure emotional torture on a daily basis, so she’d accepted Simon’s offer regardless. And then, as if all her prayers had been answered, she’d turned up to find that Helen Stewart had returned and that working with Jim, therefore, was much less of a problem than it might otherwise have been.
Karen had taken to Helen instantly. The fact that their first meeting had been delayed by Helen risking her own safety to talk a suicidal prisoner down from the roof had gone a long way towards creating a favourable initial impression. And although she’d not spent as much time as she’d have liked with Helen in the week or two that they’d been working together, it was obvious that Helen really cared, really wanted to make a difference. That’s why she’d been so surprised when Simon had suggested that it was Helen, not Jim, who was the prime problem on G-wing. And as she sat in Simon’s office, reeling slightly from the news that she was to be appointed as the new wing governor, she wondered what on earth Simon knew that she didn’t that could cause him to have such a low opinion of the Scot. While Karen was excited about the promotion and more than eager to distract herself with a new challenge, she felt a little uneasy about the circumstances in which she was replacing Helen and couldn’t help but think that it was a terrible shame that she was gone. She’d been genuinely looking forward to getting to know the woman whose values seemed so closely to mirror her own. Perhaps looking forward to it a little too much. She sighed as an image of Lou flashed in front of her eyes, causing her stomach to plummet to all too familiar depths. Perhaps it was for the best that Helen had gone. After all, Karen had come to Larkhall to escape all that, not to make the same mistakes all over again.
***
Despite the unmistakable array of neon warning signs flashing in her head, Karen had been thrilled when she’d heard, a few months down the line, that Helen would be returning to Larkhall. She'd looked forward to them working together and she'd been sure that they’d make a great team. Someone like Helen was exactly what she needed to help her cut the Jim Fenners and Sylvia Hollambys of the prison service down to size. Not that she could claim that the motivation for her excitement had been purely professional. It would have been pointless to deny that she was attracted to the former governor; not only was Helen committed, caring and outspoken as far as her professional ethics were concerned, but she was also gorgeous, funny and had an accent to die for. Who wouldn’t fancy her, Karen reasoned to herself? It certainly seemed that several of the inmates did, from the way they’d all been talking after her departure. It didn’t mean anything. Just a harmless crush. It’s not like she was planning to act on it. She’d learnt her lesson there, for sure.
She eyed the bottle of wine sitting on the sideboard in her office. It had been loitering there for ages, a sort of ‘welcome to the post' present from Simon, which she’d never quite gotten round to taking home. She tried to turn her mind back to her work, but it drifted away almost instantly, firstly to the bottle of wine, then further afield, to Helen, working late, upstairs in the library. She wondered about the merits of inviting Helen down for a drink. After all she was curious to find out more about this new job of hers, whether there was anything she could do to help. And she wouldn’t mind some friendly advice about the best way of dealing with the likes of Jim and Simon. People like her and Helen had to stick together against the old boys’ network if they wanted any power in that place. She shuddered involuntarily. That’s how she and Lou had become close in the first instance, as members of the minority group of female governors and senior officers in a prison run almost exclusively by men. The memory of a past after-work drink in another office with a different female governor and the far-reaching consequences of that night filled her mind and she blinked them away. Despite their slightly disturbing shared penchant for tight-fitting leather jackets, Helen wasn’t Lou. Which, among other things, meant that even if something did happen, which was unlikely, it would not inevitably have the same disastrous outcome. And besides, it was all slightly irrelevant, given that all she wanted to do at that moment was to get to know Helen a little better. Where was the harm in that?
***
Karen sat at her desk the next morning, her mind anywhere but the present, her fingers absent-mindedly caressing the cork from the bottle of wine she and Helen had shared the night before. The drink had gone well, and they’d found plenty to talk about, but while Karen now knew a lot more about Helen as a professional and her opinions of various members of the Larkhall workforce, she was still no closer to discovering anything about Helen as a person, except that she kept her cards very close to her chest. Karen didn’t blame her; she knew to her expense what rumour mills prisons could be, but that didn’t stop her being maddeningly curious about who Helen Stewart really was. She knew, of course, about Helen’s fiance publicly humiliating her in front of the whole wing - gossip like that didn’t die down quickly - but beyond that, she knew absolutely nothing about who Helen became when she walked out of those gates at night. She didn't know, for example, whether Helen had found a replacement for Sean, or whether there was still a vacancy to be filled. The more she reflected on that simple fact, the more interested she became, until she realised, with something like resignation, that it was already too late. However much her mind might be screaming at her to stop, however much she knew that it was a terrible idea, Helen Stewart was already firmly under Karen's skin and she had absolutely no doubt about the fact that, in a head-on battle with her sense of self-preservation, the Scot would win every time.
Fandom: Bad Girls
Pairing: Karen / Lou (implied), Karen / Helen (implied)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An alternative history of Karen Betts and her reasons for coming to Larkhall...
Disclaimer: Everything Bad Girls belongs to Shed, not me
Author's Note: Cross-posted to passion_perfect
Self-Preservation
Karen had transfered to Larkhall to escape from the past, not to have it catch up with her all over again. But ever since she’d arrived, Jim Fenner had been all over her like a rash, going on and on about that night they’d shared, asking her question after question, when all she wanted to do was forget that it had ever happened. He’d been asking her about Steven, her ex-husband, that morning, and she’d politely but firmly told him where to go. Not because she particularly objected to Jim knowing that she and Steven had broken up, but because she knew that if she told him that much, Jim would automatically fill in the blanks, would assume that he had played the starring role. He’d convince himself, and probably everyone else too, that their misguided and alcohol-fuelled one-night stand had been instrumental in the break-up of her twenty year marriage. And she supposed it had, on some bizarre and indirect level. But certainly not in the way Jim might imagine. In retrospect, it was blindingly obvious to Karen that her brief fling with Jim had confirmed what she’d always known, deep down. That the problem with her marriage had nothing to do with Steven, per se, but had everything to do with men in general. So, loathe as she was to fuel Jim’s egoistic views of the power of his own sexual prowess, she found herself equally reluctant to disclose to Jim the real reason for her the breakdown of her marriage; a passionate year-long affair with a colleague at her previous establishment. Well, not just a colleague. The wing governor. Governor Stoke. Louise.
The niggling feeling that something was missing had been a permanent feature in Karen’s life for about as long as she could remember. She’d married young, and before she’d even had time to get used to being a wife, she’d fallen pregnant. Nine months later, her beautiful baby boy became the centre of her world and everything else took a permanent backseat. However, as Ross had grown older, Karen had gradually come to realise that being a wife and mother wasn’t enough, that she needed more. She’d started her career in the prison service soon after Ross had started school but it wasn’t long before even the combined pressures of her professional life and motherhood had ceased to satisfy her cravings. So Karen had returned to education and, intent on broadening her horizons, had worked part-time for a degree throughout Ross’s secondary school career, with many an evening spent studying together at the dining table, Steven complaining that he may as well be invisible for all anyone cared. She’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel with her fling with Jim; a desperate last-ditch attempt to find something meaningful, to fill the mysterious void which still lingered in her life, and unsurprisingly it hadn't worked. Despite what she'd said to him, she was glad Jim hadn't called, because she had no idea how she would have coped if he'd spontaneously decided that he wanted to be a part of her life. It was far easier all round to pretend that that night had never happened, which was exactly what Karen had been doing until the previous week, and would continue to do, if only the decision were hers alone.
Lou Stoke’s appointment as wing governor had roughly coincided with Ross leaving home, and suddenly, after eighteen years of fruitless soul searching, Karen had realised why she felt so incomplete, had finally discovered what it meant to put her own needs and desires first. She’d never consciously considered the fact that she might be more attracted to women than men, but she supposed that on some level, she must have always known, since she’d not been particularly surprised when an after-work drink with Lou had quickly turned into so much more. Karen knew it was a cliche, but Lou really had made her complete. The first time that Lou’s lips closed over hers, Karen finally realised that this was what she had been waiting for all along; that after years of searching, she’d found what she needed somewhere that she’d never have thought to look. Six months later, after the kiss that changed everything, she divorced her husband and moved in with Lou. Six months after that, Lou got cold feet and left her, claiming she wasn’t ready to settle down. In the two months that had passed since then, work had become a daily torture, the ever-present threat of coming face to face with Lou, of being forced to relive her heartbreak at any given moment, hanging over Karen like a big black cloud. So when, out of the blue, Simon Stubberfield called to offer her a job at HMP Larkhall, Karen didn’t think twice.
Karen knew exactly what Jim would make of the whole sorry story. He’d made his views on lesbianism (completely unacceptable unless it was for his personal gratification) pretty clear to her at that conference and as much as she wanted to grind the homophobic prick into the ground, she knew she wasn’t emotionally strong enough to take him on yet. The pain was still too raw and all Karen wanted was lay low, to hide herself and her vulnerability away from the world. Karen had known that Simon’s offer seemed too good to be true. Not only was he offering her the comfort of not coming face to face with Lou every day, but there was a promotion and a pay rise in it for her too. And she wouldn’t have to move. In fact if anything, her commute would probably be shorter. Discovering that Jim Fenner was the acting governor of G-wing had been the fly in the ointment. In Karen’s eyes, the man was a stereotypical male chauvinist pig and she couldn’t for the life of her think what had ever possessed her to climb into bed with him. Still, much as she disliked the idea of having the man as a boss, it was better than being forced to endure emotional torture on a daily basis, so she’d accepted Simon’s offer regardless. And then, as if all her prayers had been answered, she’d turned up to find that Helen Stewart had returned and that working with Jim, therefore, was much less of a problem than it might otherwise have been.
Karen had taken to Helen instantly. The fact that their first meeting had been delayed by Helen risking her own safety to talk a suicidal prisoner down from the roof had gone a long way towards creating a favourable initial impression. And although she’d not spent as much time as she’d have liked with Helen in the week or two that they’d been working together, it was obvious that Helen really cared, really wanted to make a difference. That’s why she’d been so surprised when Simon had suggested that it was Helen, not Jim, who was the prime problem on G-wing. And as she sat in Simon’s office, reeling slightly from the news that she was to be appointed as the new wing governor, she wondered what on earth Simon knew that she didn’t that could cause him to have such a low opinion of the Scot. While Karen was excited about the promotion and more than eager to distract herself with a new challenge, she felt a little uneasy about the circumstances in which she was replacing Helen and couldn’t help but think that it was a terrible shame that she was gone. She’d been genuinely looking forward to getting to know the woman whose values seemed so closely to mirror her own. Perhaps looking forward to it a little too much. She sighed as an image of Lou flashed in front of her eyes, causing her stomach to plummet to all too familiar depths. Perhaps it was for the best that Helen had gone. After all, Karen had come to Larkhall to escape all that, not to make the same mistakes all over again.
***
Despite the unmistakable array of neon warning signs flashing in her head, Karen had been thrilled when she’d heard, a few months down the line, that Helen would be returning to Larkhall. She'd looked forward to them working together and she'd been sure that they’d make a great team. Someone like Helen was exactly what she needed to help her cut the Jim Fenners and Sylvia Hollambys of the prison service down to size. Not that she could claim that the motivation for her excitement had been purely professional. It would have been pointless to deny that she was attracted to the former governor; not only was Helen committed, caring and outspoken as far as her professional ethics were concerned, but she was also gorgeous, funny and had an accent to die for. Who wouldn’t fancy her, Karen reasoned to herself? It certainly seemed that several of the inmates did, from the way they’d all been talking after her departure. It didn’t mean anything. Just a harmless crush. It’s not like she was planning to act on it. She’d learnt her lesson there, for sure.
She eyed the bottle of wine sitting on the sideboard in her office. It had been loitering there for ages, a sort of ‘welcome to the post' present from Simon, which she’d never quite gotten round to taking home. She tried to turn her mind back to her work, but it drifted away almost instantly, firstly to the bottle of wine, then further afield, to Helen, working late, upstairs in the library. She wondered about the merits of inviting Helen down for a drink. After all she was curious to find out more about this new job of hers, whether there was anything she could do to help. And she wouldn’t mind some friendly advice about the best way of dealing with the likes of Jim and Simon. People like her and Helen had to stick together against the old boys’ network if they wanted any power in that place. She shuddered involuntarily. That’s how she and Lou had become close in the first instance, as members of the minority group of female governors and senior officers in a prison run almost exclusively by men. The memory of a past after-work drink in another office with a different female governor and the far-reaching consequences of that night filled her mind and she blinked them away. Despite their slightly disturbing shared penchant for tight-fitting leather jackets, Helen wasn’t Lou. Which, among other things, meant that even if something did happen, which was unlikely, it would not inevitably have the same disastrous outcome. And besides, it was all slightly irrelevant, given that all she wanted to do at that moment was to get to know Helen a little better. Where was the harm in that?
***
Karen sat at her desk the next morning, her mind anywhere but the present, her fingers absent-mindedly caressing the cork from the bottle of wine she and Helen had shared the night before. The drink had gone well, and they’d found plenty to talk about, but while Karen now knew a lot more about Helen as a professional and her opinions of various members of the Larkhall workforce, she was still no closer to discovering anything about Helen as a person, except that she kept her cards very close to her chest. Karen didn’t blame her; she knew to her expense what rumour mills prisons could be, but that didn’t stop her being maddeningly curious about who Helen Stewart really was. She knew, of course, about Helen’s fiance publicly humiliating her in front of the whole wing - gossip like that didn’t die down quickly - but beyond that, she knew absolutely nothing about who Helen became when she walked out of those gates at night. She didn't know, for example, whether Helen had found a replacement for Sean, or whether there was still a vacancy to be filled. The more she reflected on that simple fact, the more interested she became, until she realised, with something like resignation, that it was already too late. However much her mind might be screaming at her to stop, however much she knew that it was a terrible idea, Helen Stewart was already firmly under Karen's skin and she had absolutely no doubt about the fact that, in a head-on battle with her sense of self-preservation, the Scot would win every time.